NATO Transformation Priorities

NATO's new Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, French air force Gen. Jean-Paul Palomeros, has been presenting his priorities to NATO's civilian and military authorities. Last week, he did so to the North Atlantic Council, the alliance's highest political authority, and to the Military Committee, NATO's top military body. Today, he shared his ideas with the press before attending a session of the Military Committee at the level of chiefs of staff on 16-17 January.

NATO photo

Palomeros' first priority is to maintain the highest level of interoperability and availability of NATO forces. In this context, he underlined the importance of joint training, which has since December been the responsibility of the command he took over three months ago. He presented to allied political and military officials a new joint training concept aimed at producing synergies among the different NATO member states to increase their effectiveness. This includes individual training and e-learning. He said NATO is a major provider of e-learning, in which he sees opportunities for savings. He also considers the NATO Response Force "indispensable" in the "interconnection of forces to maintain their interoperability and effectiveness" and wants to give it "the means to continue to be the operational tool it has always been, and also a transformation tool for validating our concepts and sometimes also for validating equipment and command systems."

His second priority is the coherent development of allied capabilities through the NATO defense planning process and "rapid, useful and effective responses allowing countries to cooperate in the spirit of smart defense" in such areas as missile defense, cyberdefense, and increasing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Palomeros' third priority is to continue to develop NATO partnerships, notably with the European Union, of which he pointed out 21 allies are members.